February is Black History Month. We’re celebrating the occasion by honoring four Black heroes of emergency response.

1. Molly Williams

Enslaved by a New York City merchant who was also a firefighter, Molly Williams became in 1815 the first recorded Black firefighter and first woman firefighter in the United States. She served with Ocean Engine Company #11 in Manhattan.

During the cholera outbreak in the winter of 1818, a fire broke out in Manhattan. Most or all of the firefighters of Company #11 were ill from influenza, cholera, or other sicknesses, so Molly pulled the heavy company water pump by herself through the snow to the fire.

Celebrated for her bravery and strength, Molly became known as Volunteer No. 11 within the company. There wasn’t another female firefighter in New York for another 146 years.

2. Jabbar Gibson

In August of 2005 during Hurricane Katrina, Jabbar Gibson was a 20-year-old resident of the Fischer Projects in New Orleans. Most of the residents of the Projects had not evacuated when the mandate to do so was issued because most of them lacked vehicles. In addition, many were unwilling to abandon their homes and had nowhere else to go.

The Projects had not been in good condition before the Hurricane, but the storm had caused even more damage, breaking windows, the roof, and segments of the walls. The residents lived there for several days without power, but then the levees broke, and they learned that floodwaters were encroaching upon their ward.

Gibson and some others left the building to find help. They came across a bus barn with a number of abandoned buses inside, found keys to the buses in an unlocked office, and eventually got one of the buses to start.

Gibson didn’t have a car, a license, or any driver’s education, but he figured out how to make the bus drive. He and others loaded Fischer residents onto the bus. While loading, they were stopped by the police. But Gibson’s mother convinced the police that they needed the bus in order to escape with their lives, and the police relented.

Gibson drove the bus, which was packed with about 60 people, out of the city. On the way, the passengers witnessed some of the hurricane’s devastation, including abandoned neighborhoods and dead bodies floating in the floodwater.

On Highway 90, Gibson stopped the bus a few times to pick up stranded people. The passengers contributed their money to pay for gas when they needed to refuel. The gas attendant gave them water and the news that the Houston Astrodome, five hours away from New Orleans, was taking in evacuees.

It took them thirteen hours to get to Houston because of the chaos and traffic pileups. At first, when Gibson pulled up outside the Astrodome, officials prevented the Fischer evacuees from entering because they weren’t a scheduled arrival. But the passengers argued their case, and eventually they were allowed inside, where they and 25,000 other evacuees found temporary shelter.

3. Freedom House Ambulance Service

Before the mid-1960s, in the United States people were usually transported to the hospital by the police, funeral businesses, or private ambulance. In 1960s and 1970s Pittsburgh, only white residents could afford private ambulances. People who lived in the Hill District, which was the city's oldest Black neighborhood, often endured long wait times to get transportation to the hospital in the back of a paddy wagon.

To address the problem, two men—Phil Hallen and Dr. Peter Safar—with funding from the federal government, launched the Freedom House Ambulance Service, an all-Black team of paramedics who served the needs of the underrepresented residents of the City. From 1968 to 1975, the service helped save thousands of lives.

Just as important, their model became the gold standard for professional paramedic services across the nation. The Freedom House leadership established the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians to formalize the profession and also introduced the practices of involving physicians in ambulance work, having medics administer EKGs and share the results with the receiving hospital, using air casts for bone stabilization, and administering Narcan to overdose patients. Their work improved patients’ chances of surviving long enough to get to the hospital.

The Freedom House program gave jobs and training to residents of the community, none of whom had other formal medical training. At the height of its operation, Freedom House employed 35 crew members and fielded 7,000 calls annually.

4. Yamel Josefina Merino Jager

When Yamel Merino, an EMT for MetroCare Ambulance in the Bronx, was only 22 and a single mother, she was named EMT of the Year by the 2,000-employee company.

Merino had earned her GED and started working for MetroCare Ambulance two years earlier, in 1998. She then completed her Emergency Medical Technician certification and moved from the transport to the 911 division of the company.

On September 11, 2001, she and her partner were on duty when a call came out about a plane crashing into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. They immediately drove into Manhattan to help the injured. By the time they arrived, a second plane had struck the South Tower.

After reporting to the triage center set up near the South Tower, Merino left her partner with the ambulance and entered the chaotic scene to treat the injured. While she was helping people, the South Tower fell, killing her and many others. The North Tower fell soon after.

Her name is listed on the National 911 Memorial and Museum. She was posthumously named New York State’s EMT of the Year. In 2005 at the White House, her son accepted the 9/11 Heroes Medal of Valor in her name.

A Problem of Equity

Despite the efforts of these heroes and others, Black Americans and other people of color experience grave inequity when it comes to disaster resilience. Research shows that climate-related disasters disproportionately affect Black Americans, but less than 12 percent of emergency management professionals are Black, and Black Americans get less post-disaster assistance.

With many DEI programs currently under attack, the disproportionate effect on BIPOC of climate change—related disasters is likely to increase. Tthe problem affects all of us because we’re only as resilient as the least resilient among us.

Fixing the inequity in terms of service and funding allocation is crucial, but so is Increasing Black participation in emergency response, whether at the volunteer or professional levels. Some national efforts are intended to change the professional representation problem. For example, ten Historically Black Colleges and Universities offer emergency preparedness training.

Last year, AmeriCorps, a national service program, launched a diversity, equity and inclusion initiative to encourage a more diverse participation.

Other programs like FEMA Corps, AmeriCorps VISTA, and AmeriCorps NCCC offer Black young people the opportunity to learn about emergency response and management while earning a living stipend.

Girls Future Firefighter Camp, which was founded by Chief Shelly L. Carter, the first Black female fire chief in New England, offers another opportunity for Black youth to get involved in emergency response.

BP Values

One of the core values of Bainbridge Prepares addresses the problem of inequity in emergency preparedness and response:

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